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The Philadelphia Bulletin.
The Washington Star.
The Village Voice.
The Los Angeles Herald-Examiner.
The Houston Post.
The St. Louis Globe-Democrat.
The Allentown Evening Chronicle.
The Boston Phoenix.
The Rocky Mountain News.
The Oakland Tribune.
The Philadelphia Journal.
The Dallas Times Herald.
The National.
The Providence Evening Bulletin.
The Las Vegas Sporting News.
And the list goes on and on and on.
The list of daily and weekly newspapers in the U.S. that have gone out of business in recent years is staggering.
But there may be some relief in sight.
Thanks to, of all things, sports betting!
That's right.
You heard right.
Sports betting.
The Internet has been a real killer for the newspaper industry in America.
Now it may be the thing that saves it.
Websites such as Craig's List that offer cheap and/or free classified ads have decimated the classified advertising at many newspapers.
And circulation has dropped at many newspapers too, as more and more people refuse to pay for news that can be obtained online free.
The combination of lost revenues from ads and circulation has made it impossible for lots of newspapers to survive financially.
But unlike in the U.S., newspapers dropping like flies has not been a problem for newspapers in the U.K.
Why?
Because newspapers in the U.K. are legally allowed to offer sports betting, and the money earned from that offsets the revenues lost from decreased advertising and circulation, and keeps the papers in business.
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A prime example of this is The Sun, a daily British tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch and published in London.
The Sun has its own website for news (thesun.co.uk) but also runs a sports betting website called Sun Bets (sunbets.co.uk).
Other U.K. newspapers have similar set-ups.
Could this trend be coming to the U.S.?
And could it save the ailing American newspaper industry?
The U.S. Supreme Court recently heard arguments, pro and con, about whether sports betting should be legal nationwide in the USA.
Under federal law, sports betting currently is legal only in Nevada, Delaware, Montana and Oregon.
But New Jersey wants a piece of the lucrative sports betting pie so it sued the Feds, arguing that the Feds can't allow some states to have a particular industry but not other states.
In fact, there's no other situation anywhere in America where the federal governemnt has said one state can have something but another state cannot, which has led most legal observers following the case to predict that the U.S. Supreme Court will rule that any state that wants legal sports betting will be allowed to have it.
And that decision could come at any time.
And when it does, newspapers in the U.S., just like anybody else in America, will be allowed to offer legal sports betting.
It will literally be a game-changer for the American newspaper industy.
You can bet on that.
By Tom Somach
Gambling 911 Staff Writer
